Nando Media Delivers Digital News Using Industry Standard Servers From Dell; Price-to-Performance Advantage Drives Adoption of Industry Standard Servers Over UNIX

Business Wire, Jan 15, 2002

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 15, 2002

Nando Media, a pioneer in electronic publishing, delivers affordable, around-the-clock Web site solutions for its newspaper clients using Dell's industry standard PowerEdge(tm) servers.

"We provide hosting services, 24-hour news and sports content and the content management system for newspapers across the country. These customers are very price sensitive so it is imperative to offer a competitively priced product," said Joe Overocker, director of technology for Nando Media. "Dell's scaleable servers provided us comparable performance at a significantly lower price-to-performance ratio than the Unix systems we had. Moving to industry standard systems was a key strategic business decision for us."

Nando, the interactive publishing arm of The McClatchy Co. newspaper chain, publishes "The Nando Times" and "The SportServer" national Web sites. It also provides the Digital Workbench(tm), a complete Web-based publishing solution and support product for online publishers.

The Digital Workbench is based on a three-tiered architecture using servers for database, page update processor and content processor. Running Free BSD, an advanced operating system, the Dell PowerEdge 6450 servers provide the database; PowerEdge 1550s are the fileservers and 2550s are application servers, and the Dell PowerApp.120(tm) is the Web server. Clients may employ more Web servers to handle larger loads and the Web servers are not limited by operating system or Web server software. Nando currently has more than 100 Dell PowerEdge servers in use and also is standardized on Dell Latitude(tm) notebooks and Dell OptiPlex(tm) desktop systems.

"It is an extremely scaleable architecture, allowing for the addition of Web servers as a client's site grows," Overocker said. "The stability of the Dell/Intel platform has been outstanding -- equal to what we had previously with our more expensive systems, which couldn't touch the price-to-performance ratio of the Dell systems."

The reliability of the Nando architecture served a far greater audience than average in the days following the Sept. 11 terrorists' attacks. Nando's access to major wire reports and its ability to deliver updated packages of the news on its Web sites was not disrupted while many newspapers experienced problems accessing national news feed services. More than two-dozen additional newspapers used the Nando site for updated coverage of the events.

"The number of page views served by our Web sites quadrupled, however we never had an interruption in service and our page load times remained at very good levels," said Kathy Ives, director of marketing for Nando Media. "While it was not the way we would choose to validate our operations, it was a testimony to the reliability of our network architecture."

About Nando Media

A pioneer in Web publishing, Nando Media brings efficiency to online publishing with tools and services to help businesses succeed on the Web. Nando offers a complete publishing solution for its publishing clients, including The Digital Workbench(tm) content management system, 24-hour news and special topic packaged content, hosting and ad management services. The Digital Workbench publishing system is currently being used to publish 15 McClatchy Co. and non-McClatchy newspaper sites, including The Bakersfield Californian and The Winnipeg Free Press.

From its Digital Workbench publishing solutions to contextually relevant content, Nando leverages its years of publishing experience, extensive partnerships and technical expertise to meet customers' ongoing needs for Web development. Nando Media is the interactive media division of The McClatchy Co. (NYSE:MNI), one of the nation's top 10 newspaper companies. The company's Web site is located at www.nandomedia.com.

About Dell

Dell Computer Corporation (Nasdaq:DELL) is the world's No. 1 computer systems company and is a premier provider of products and services required for customers to build their information-technology and Internet infrastructures. The company's revenue for the past four quarters totaled $31.8 billion. Dell ranks No. 48 on the Fortune 500, No. 122 on the Fortune Global 500 and No. 7 on the Fortune Global "most admired" lists of companies. Dell, through its direct business model, designs, manufactures and customizes products and services to customer requirements, and offers an extensive selection of software and peripherals. Information on Dell and its products can be obtained on the World Wide Web at www.dell.com.

Dell, PowerEdge, Lattitude and OptiPlex are trademarks of Dell Computer Corporation. Fortune and Fortune 500 are registered trademarks, and Fortune Global 500 is a trademark of Time Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.